Date Point: 15y6m1w AV
Racing Thunder, Kwmbwrw Border territory
Shipfather Yefrig
The critical thing about seizing the initiative was that, once seized, it became a bludgeon to be applied repeatedly and brutally to the enemy at every opportunity.
The Gao had long known it; the Humans had shown them how to maximize it, and new terminology like ‘OODA loop’ had entered their lexicon. All that was needed was the will to apply that thinking, and nobody had a will as ferociously ruthless as the Great Father. The Hunters were not being given the chance to regain their balance.
Oh, the horrors were fast and adaptable enough. Or maybe desperation and hunger were spurring them into action. But they were scrambling, disorganised, messy and they weren’t taking care to disguise their pattern of attack.
Daar’s flagship, the Destroying Fury, was in the lead on many of the attacks. The Great Father was seldom present on the battlefield these days, but nobody could blame him. He’d risked much personally and politically to get them all to this point, and he had strengths that were better use elsewhere. Naval combat, quote: “weren’t his thing.”
No. He was planning something much more his style. He was planning an invasion.
The fleet, meanwhile, was doing everything it could to capitalize on the Ring’s destruction, and mostly succeeding.
…Mostly. There was a reason the Hunters had been the galaxy’s scourge for such a long time, and no amount of momentum or initiative would ever save the poor bastards who’d once crewed the smashed mining station that Yefrig was now considering.
The usual orgy of blood and dismemberment wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Instead, the station was entirely empty. They had taken everyone and left hardly a trace of their passing, then torn the station apart for scrap and salvage. If it was possible to feel sympathy for an inanimate object, then Yefrig definitely felt sorry for that station: It looked like the gutted carcass of a large herd animal brought down by predators, which really it was.
After the Great Father’s declarations in the Security Council, something like this was not going to go down well with the Kwmbwrw.
Still, he’d sent a salvage team to pick over the bones. It was just possible that this time the Hunters had missed a sensor cluster or a computer whose memory banks contained the clue they needed to track down where exactly this specific group was raiding from.
That was the problem with space: without precise telemetry, hunting anything was impossible. Their best efforts had narrowed the field down to a volume about thirty light years across… containing several hundred star systems. Which meant tens of thousands of planets and moons, and uncountable millions of suitable asteroids and icy bodies, not to mention the possibility that the Hunters weren’t using any such thing and had instead built a nice dark station for themselves somewhere in the interstellar wilderness.
Or indeed that they weren’t still here, cloaked and looking to get some revenge for their shiny space trinket.
“Shipfather? The Kwmbwrw fleet just entered wake comms range.”
That put them minutes away. With a sigh, Yefrig resigned himself to disappointment.
“Recall the salvage team,” he said. “We’ll pass on all of our data to the fleet’s Matriarch as a courtesy and withdraw.”
Not every hunt could be a success, he supposed. But that was true for both sides: The Gaoian fleet had thwarted more attacks than it had missed. Each miss hurt… but the initiative was still theirs, and still being applied.
“…She… Sends her thanks and regards, Shipfather.” The communications Brother sounded surprised, and Yefrig could hardly blame him. The Kwmbwrw attitude had, officially at least, been snooty rather than warm. Getting a note of esteem out of one of their fleet Matriarchs was.. Unexpected. And warming.
“Reciprocate my regards and get us out of here,” he ordered. “We have Hunters to hunt.”
Maybe there’d been a small kind of a victory today after all…
Date Point: 15y6m1w AV
Builder Brood-barge, Hell system, Hunter space
The Builder Alpha-of-Alphas
Waste was one thing; jettisoning of dead weight was another. A resource that endangered other resources was the functional opposite of an asset, and for the time being there was a ruthless calculus at play across the entire Swarm-of-Swarms.
To whit: The strong ate, and the weak starved.
“Strong” and “weak” didn’t have to mean literal mass and ability to apply force as far as the Alpha-of-Alphas was concerned. That was old thinking, stupid Eater thinking. The new definition of strength revolved around self-sufficiency and utility to the Swarm. Those broods that applied themselves subtly and skillfully, that exercised discretion and cunning, that respected the prey and picked their targets got first pick of the Builders, and it was Builders that ensured their survival.
The Builder had been prepared for backlash, for dissent and for attempted coups. It had anticipated that those Eaters that fell on the wrong side of the remorseless equation of survival would make desperate grabs for the throne in an attempt to save themselves.
In fact, very few had. Something about the situation seemed to speak to them in their guts.
After generations of a “Hunt” just being a case of finding some poorly-defended station or transport, swatting aside its defences and swaggering onto its decks to wreak carnage among a woefully unprepared crew, now they were actually hunting. The difference was hard to define, but the risk of failure and the consequences of failing seemed to be pivotal.
There had been no skill involved in the old way. The Hunters had achieved such overwhelming superiority that they hadn’t needed skill, and they had suffered for it. Stagnated.
Now, the options were to improve or die. And many, many more had died than improved.
What remained, however, was stability. Sustainability. The surviving Broods were smaller, smarter and more cunning, and the resources distributed among them went further. And as for the Builders…
+< Intrigued > It self-replicated?+
+< Confirmation> The scout watched it for several cycles. It surveyed the inner-system planets then found a rich resource deposit and deployed a nanofactory. It then built a shipyard and constructed what appeared to be a copy of itself before departing via jump drive.+
+< Growing inspiration > Such replication could theoretically be exponential. < Query > You were unable to capture it?+
+< Affirmative > We attempted to capture the duplicate after the original left, but it appears to have been designed to self-destruct at the first sign of interference. The on-board fusion weapon was not large, but it was sufficient to atomize the device. There was nothing left to recover.+
+< Disappointment > A pity. But what you gleaned was more than sufficient. Do you have any indication of what exactly it was doing?+
+< Negative > Its only observed function was survey and self-replication.+
+< Conviction > Those cannot have been its only function. < Instruction > Find another and observe for longer this time without interfering.+
+< Obedience > It shall be as the Alpha-of-Alphas commands.+
The Builder ended the call, and thought. Exponential replication. Of course! The idea of relying on automation would have stuck in an Eater’s throat, but to a Builder…
< Glee >
It opened a design interface and begun to experiment with concepts.
Perhaps the Hunters could operate with skill while retaining the numerical advantage after all…
Date Point: 15y6m1w AV
Mrwrki Station, Erebor system, Deep Space
Lewis Beverote
Coitus interruptus fucking sucked. Not least because, frankly, there was no dignified way for Lewis to answer a call when he was tied spread-eagled to the bed being given the agonizing teasing of a lifetime. Lucy had the world’s most pleasantly torturous hands.
At least the station communications dudes had been cool enough to switch all the calls to audio-only by default. For some insane reason Mrwrki’s original owners had used video calls for the default, and there’d been a few embarrassing moments for other people.
Lucy answered the call for him while he stifled a groan at the physical discomfort the interruption was causing him. “Sergeant Campbell.”
“Hey Campbell, it’s Lee. We just got a Coltainer jumpback.”
Lewis tried to sit up and almost ruptured his shoulder. He grimaced and called out instead. “We did? What generation?”
“Serial number says second-gen. We’re pulling the memory now. Figured you’d wanna be here when we open it up.”
“Thanks, Lee. See you shortly.” Lucy ended the call then turned and cocked her hip to plant a hand on it and grin at Lewis. “Bad timing for you.”
Lewis sighed and rested his head back. “For both of us, you mean… I mean… we’ve got t—”
She shook her head. “We don’t have time, baby.”
“…Uuuurgh…”
She untied him and went to grab her uniform. “Just think of it as orgasm denial play.”
“Yaaaaay.”
He sat up and watched as she got dressed in her ICU without changing out of her lingerie. “…Are you allowed to wear thigh-highs and a basque under that?”
“Shh. It’s our naughty little secret.”
“…Ooh!”
She threw a t-shirt at him. “Come on, pull yourself together and get dressed!”
“Right, right…”
A few minutes later, and after Lewis had discreetly adjusted his underwear a few times, they stepped off the elevator in the station’s shuttle bay. For various reasons, they’d designed the Coltainers to send over a physical drive in a drone, which had obviously just touched down and Lee was busily opening the access panel with an eager expression like a kid at Christmas opening a present that dwarfed the tree.
He did a bit of a double-take as they joined him though.
“…Nice makeup, Camp. What’s the occasion?”
Lucy snorted. “The occasion is shut up and open the bloody drone,” she retorted.
Lewis inspected the serial number on the drone’s side. Rather than being painted on, it had been literally stamped into the metal as the probe was assembled. They’d tried a few ways of getting the probes to paint their offspring but ultimately given it up as pure vanity and unnecessary. They were only supposed to make contact with their origin station anyway, and were otherwise programmed to avoid contact with piloted ships, up to and including self-destructing via their on-board nuke. What did it matter if they were all bare galvanized metal and ceramic?
“VNCIC-Erebor-03-02-04…” he read aloud. In other words, it was the fourth second-generation probe built by the third probe they’d launched from Mrwrki.
“Jumpback handshake says it’s already got five children, too,” Lee informed him.
“Dang, dude! Three-one musta found a real good asteroid or somethin’.”
There was a ringing clang, and the access panel finally came loose and dropped on the deck. Lucy shoved it aside with her boot and accepted a pair of gloves from Lee to help him unlatch the blackbox. After spending its entire existence in space, the probe was so cold that frost had lined its edges and corners in crisp white.
“Okay… three, two, one…”
They heaved the blackbox out together and staggered with it just for a few steps until they could land it on the trolley.
“Time to see what it’s got for us…”
“Think it’ll be good?”
“I hope so. This is kinda the moment of truth for the whole program, isn’t it?”
In fact, the data turned out to be a goldmine. It took them nearly half an hour to pull apart the blackbox, by which time Colonel Nadeau had been woken up and showed up to help. He was quite happy to go over the stellar spectrography and astrogeological surveys in the background while Lewis, Lucy and Lee plugged the data into Lewis’ experimental machine-learning system, SAM.
“Okay!” Lee read off. “Class twelve! Surface gravity… Nine point seven-seven meters per second squared. Nice big moon, a little bigger than Luna even… average surface temperature fourteen point two celsius… Atmospheric CO2, O2 and water all in the green.”
Lewis had already speed-read the whole summary at a glance. “Dude, it’s basically Earth mark two. Hell, none of the Misfit mission’s finds were this close.”
He tried to discreetly adjust his pants again in a vain attempt to restore some comfort, but Lee smirked at him. “Hey. I know the data’s sexy, but come on man, keep it together.”
“…Dude.”
In fact, calling the planet Earth 2.0 was about on the money. Even the solar system it was in was similar: The star was even a G2V like Sol, there were a couple of huge gas giants, a couple of smaller colder ones in the out-system, the target world was the third of four rocky terrestrials in the inner system…
There were some inevitable differences. Earth 2.0 had a more pronounced axial tilt, and its moon, in addition to being larger, was closer and not quite tidally locked, which Lucy suggested probably meant it was much younger. Aside from huge tides, it was difficult to predict how that would affect surface conditions, but the coltainer probe had been impressed enough to establish a pre-colony site and jump array before returning.
“So whaddawe think?” Lewis asked after they’d spent half an hour cooing over lush satellite imagery and the UAVs the probe had sent down.
“I think it looks like the probe’s working!” Lucy declared.
Colonel Nadeau looked up from the data he was analysing with a smile. “That’s good news,” he said. “When can we have an exploration team ready?”
“Uh…I dunno. How are those JETS teams doing, Lee?” Lewis asked.
Lee’s eyes drifted for a second as he tried to remember. “From what I heard they have two teams ready. So, all we need is the actual scientists and surveyors. I’ll have to ask the guys over at Scotch Creek about that.”
“Right. Well. Congratulations, anyway. I… yes?”
A private had just knocked on the door. “Sir, there’s a representative from Clan Whitecrest here to see you.”
Nadeau blinked, then shrugged and stood up. “Did he say what it was about?”
“Not to me, sir, just that it was political.”
“Ah, damn. I hate politics.” Nadeau sighed and pulled himself away from the data he’d been going over. “Alright, I’ll see him in my office.”
“Yes sir.”
Nadeau turned to the trio around the blackbox and paused before leaving. “You three should probably get some sleep. It’s late, and that thing’s not going anywhere. No point in wrecking yourself over something that’ll still be here in the morning.”
“Aaargh, you’re blue-balling me sir,” Lee sighed, then quirked an eyebrow when Lewis snorted and Lucy raised hand to cover her grin.
Nadeau looked similarly bemused, but shrugged it off and left with a vague “See you all in the morning.”
Lewis cleared his throat. “He’s right though, dude. This can wait.”
Lee shook his head. “Now I know something’s up.”
Lucy shoved Lewis toward the door, without meeting any resistance. “G’night, Chief.”
“Uh… ‘night.”
Rather than talking about work on the elevator or the short walk back to their suite, Lucy just held his hand and took the lead. He was almost dragged to the door and shoved inside first. Finally alone again, she wrapped her arms around him from behind and hugged him. “Well. Congratulations, baby.”
“Dude, coltainer’s just as much your creation as mine…”
“Nuh-uh. Tonight, you’re getting aaall the credit.” She trailed her fingers down his back, then goosed him. “Now where were we…?”
“Uh… edging.”
“Oh yeah…” She nibbled at his ear and sent shivers down his spine as she whispered. “Don’t turn around.”
He grit his teeth and screwed his face up. “Oh come on, Loo, you’re gonna tease me more?!”
There were the soft sounds of zippers and falling fabric from behind him. “You gonna let me? The best things in life are worth waiting for…”
Lewis really wanted to be done waiting, but… Dammit, she was right. So he grit his teeth harder and resisted the urge to turn around. This was a moment to trust her, so he bunched his fists and forced himself to stay still until finally she walked past him having stripped back down to her lingerie and a sinful expression, and led him forward by hooking a finger into his collar.
His patience was amply rewarded.
Date Point: 15y6m1w1d AV
Folctha, Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Ava Ríos
Her model arrived in secrecy. Just a car, and a couple of Gaoians who brusquely checked the street to ensure they weren’t overseen, and then held the door while their charge hustled through the front door and up the stairs.
Ava’s studio today was one of the oldest permanent buildings in Folctha, the old town hall. Originally conceived as little more than a central storehouse for goods and a place where incoming colonists could bed down while something a little more permanent was found for them, nowadays it was more of a public space. It was used by a dance class and bands for a practice space, it was rented out by the indoor badminton club, on Wednesdays it was taken over by Folctha’s geeks for a night of board games, wargames and Magic…
Today, it was a canvas. She’d laid out her equipment along one wall and waited patiently, because there was no point in setting up the lighting, the filters, the backdrop and all the rest until she’d met her model and established the theme.
Derek had given her a good idea what the theme would be… and one day she’d definitely get Derek in front of the camera. But Derek wasn’t today’s model.
Today’s model was arguably one of the most powerful people in the galaxy. Daar. Great Father of the Gao.
Madre de Dios.
Okay, Gaoians came in some varied shapes and sizes. Myun sprang to mind, being basically the furry equivalent of a valkyrie. But Daar almost didn’t look like the same species. It wasn’t his prodigious size, it was the way he moved: Where every other Gaoian Ava knew either moved with a kind of fussy poise or else in a prowling swagger, Daar… trundled into the room, as though it couldn’t possibly contain anything that might endanger or humiliate him. It would have looked comical if he wasn’t so feral in appearance.
Of course, straightening up made him no less fearsome. But his face and the set of his ears was friendly.
“Miss.”
Ava shook his paw. “Uh… It’s a, uh… real pleasure to meet you.”
He chittered, which wasn’t even close to being the right word to describe the contrabass sound that rumbled deep in his chest, but nothing better came to mind.
“Relax. Anyone ‘Horse an’ Boss speak so highly of don’t need ‘ta stand on ceremony with me,” he reassured her.
That was nice to hear, but Ava decided to plump for honesty. Besides, Hannah was standing behind her legs and staring up at Daar looking as meek and non-threatening as possible. “Truthfully? I think I’d be intimidated anyway.”
He duck-nodded, but folded himself down to ground level to sniff noses with Hannah. “Not gonna lie neither, I ain’t no kitten. But that’s why we’re here, ain’t it?”
“I guess so.”
For whatever reason, Hannah relaxed a bit. Maybe it was scent, maybe it was body language in common, who knew? There were times when dogs and Gaoians understood each other better than humans understood either, and this was clearly one of them. Certainly it seemed to satisfy Daar, who straightened up as Hannah trotted away and curled up on the cushion Ava had left for her in the corner. She kept a wary eye on him, but didn’t look remotely as scared as she had done only seconds before.
Dogs had it lucky sometimes. Humans couldn’t switch moods so quickly.
“So.” Daar looked around. “Not set up yet?”
“Not until I know how to set up,” Ava explained. He duck-nodded, then grinned fiercely and waggled his ears.
“Where should I leave my clothes?”
Ava laughed. He had a sense of humor that managed to… not blunt his claws, nor make her forget them. But it fit his character perfectly.
Well, two could play that game. “Hold on there,” she replied with a grin. “I want to get to know you first.”
“What, my reputation don’t precede me?”
“Well, we’re not here for your reputation, are we? We’re here for you. Laid bare.”
He made a grunting kind of a noise and joined her at the camp table where she’d left her notes. She sat in a fold-out chair while Daar looked at his chair, huffed in some amused way, then sat on the floor directly like a gigantic cross between a pit bull and a grizzly bear. His people had made it very clear on his behalf that nothing was off-limits, no subject was taboo and no question was forbidden which was a frankly terrifying position to be in. The agony of having too much choice was real and powerful.
Daar, it seemed, actually wanted an utterly remorseless interview. He wanted to bare his soul and stand naked in front of the world, both figuratively and literally. That was… both breathtaking and surprising.
“So… your letter said you had some words you wanted to start the piece with,” she said.
“Yeah, but I ain’t ready yet.” Daar settled himself. “I figger this here’s a two-way street: You wanna lay me bare, I ain’t happy to let’cha ‘less I get know you better. You’re important to two’a the guys I respect most in the world, an’ I wanna know why that is.”
Ava noticed his nose was twitching while he spoke: He was scenting her, getting a feel for her in a way that humans just couldn’t. Gaoians always claimed they could smell when somebody was lying, not that she particularly wanted to lie anyway. She wouldn’t know where to begin.
Cut out the false modesty, she guessed.
“Truthfully? I don’t know what they see. I know what I hope they see, and what I’ve searched for in myself, but…” she shrugged.
“Hmm.” He rumbled it more than spoke the word; his English was very good but it had a particular colloquial lilt to it that was hard to place. “Boss says you saved his life.”
“He got shot. He talked me through giving him first aid.”
“Ha! That’s where he got them scars, weren’t it!?”
“A couple of them.”
“And you two’re a thing now?”
“Allegedly!”
“Good! I bet y’two’ll make cute cubs!”
Ava laughed. That thought hadn’t even remotely been on her mind, but she decided not to say so. Instead she acknowledged the compliment—and he definitely meant it as a compliment—with a polite “I’m sure we will.”
“You an’ Horse were a thing ‘fer a long while too, if I ‘member right.”
His expression changed. It wasn’t solicitous and friendly anymore. It was…intense.
“…Yeah,” Ava agreed. “We fucked it up. Me more than him, but I know he says the same.”
“Okay. So whaddya think ‘ya learned from that? ‘Cuz I ain’t asking ‘fer a puff piece here. If I wanted that I’d jus’ release a statement or somfin.’ What truth did ‘ya learn?”
Well. The big brute could ask sharp, insightful questions with the best of them. Ava honestly didn’t have an answer prepared for a question like that… but she knew well enough that those were the best kinds of questions. On the thorns of a question like that, people could really learn about themselves, if they paused and tried to truly think.
“I… learned how easy it is to lie to myself. And how it’s easier to switch to a new lie than face the truth.”
Daar duck-nodded in agreement. “It’s easy, ain’t it? Y’know the thing ‘bout us Stonebacks is we never lie, ‘cept honestly that’s prol’ly a lie too. People lie to themselves allatime and don’t notice. Like me ‘fer example. I keep tellin’ myself I ain’t a down-right bastard and sometimes, I gotta wonder… am I lyin’ to m’self?”
Ava sat back and looked at him. “…You know… I hated myself,” she told him. “For a long time there, I was convinced that I was just the most worthless bitch who ever breathed. I knew that the world would be better without me, that people’s lives would get easier if I wasn’t around to screw it up for th—”
“Y’ain’t worthless,” Daar interrupted her sternly. “You stop that.”
“I know that now,” Ava agreed. “But it was a lie I believed for a long time.”
Daar’s nose twitched again. “You don’t no more.”
“No.”
“Good. Y’know… ‘Horse is a really good judge o’ people, even if he ain’t none too good with his words. That means something.”
“Yeah. Not perfect, though.”
“Balls, ain’t nobody perfect, ‘cept maybe Naydi. Well, no. She picked a life wit’ me over bein’ free like every other Female, so…that’s the thing. Now, I know this ain’t what you had in mind and I know you’re already recording—by the way, why a mechanical tape recorder?”
“A gift from an old friend. And how did you know?”
He flicked one of his huge, wolf-like ears. “Sounds like the belt drive in it is wearin’ out. Anyhoo. I know you were maybe thinkin’ this’d go different, and I want ‘ya to ask questions! But I need ‘ta know you really get who you’re dealin’ with, no offense. So: I am a Great Father. Do you know what that means?”
“…No. I suspect I probably don’t.”
“You are clever! What do ‘ya think it means? ‘Cuz this right here is important as fuck.”
“I think… I think it means…” Ava stopped and thought hard. She was beginning to feel like she was the one being interviewed, but in the back of her mind she was already writing the article to go with this and it was coming out very different to what she’d imagined.
“…I think it means the buck stops with you?” she hazarded.
“Oh, that’s definitely part of it. But, jus’ for context? I’m only the second Great Father in recorded history. Maybe there was we think a few more before then, but…” He shrugged.
“…It means things have gone badly wrong,” Ava realized.
“Yup. ‘Cuz we Great Fathers, we have only ever been created. Great Father Fyu, he was deemed a Great Father by the unanimous chorus of his entire assembled forces, while he stood on the bloody corpses o’ some the worst Keeda-fuck monsters we’ve ever made. Fyu died that day. What stood in his place was somethin’ way more darker.”
“And Daar?” Ava asked. “Did Daar die?”
“Which Daar? The big, happy, smug guy who use’ta be Champion o’ Stoneback? He’s been dead a long while. ‘Cuz lemme ask you again: what is a Great Father? When do we come along?”
The point he’d been driving at finally clicked home in Ava’s mind, stinging her painfully with thoughts of her parents and school friends and nuclear fire. “…You come along at the end of the world,” she said. “When things change forever. You… are the end of the world in some ways. You’re an avatar for it.”
He sat back on his haunches, looking pleased. “…You do unnerstand. There’s…other connotations too. But I’ll just send ‘ya the book. Do with it what you will.”
“I… thank you.” Ava cleared her throat then gestured over at her camera and equipment. “We should probably start that shoot now.”
“Yeah. An’ I bet ‘ya got an idea on how ‘ta do it now?”
“Shadows and contrast, I think. But not black and white. The color of your fur needs to show.”
“Sounds like ‘ya wanna portray me as a monster.” It wasn’t unfriendly.
“I was thinking… chaos, with you emerging from the chaos. Part of it, but also giving it shape, bringing some order to it.”
Daar duck-nodded and silently took to calisthenics while Ava prepped her lighting. It didn’t take her long to prepare, nor did Daar need much prompting once she was ready. He pranced right onto center stage and seemed to instinctually take advantage of the light. He was a good model, with his glowing eyes peering out from under the shadows. He was…striking.
“You’ve done this before.”
“Yup, simpler times. Mostly I was in it for the tail then.”
“You had some words you wanted me to open the piece with,” she reminded him.
“I did. I’ll tell ‘em when you’ve taken ‘yer pictures and asked everythin’ else, ‘kay? You’ve got, uh, two hours left.”
“Órale.”
Ava grabbed Sara’s camera—she always used it for the special projects, and to this day it was definitely Sara’s camera and not hers—and set to work, asking questions as they came to her head. If Daar minded, objected to or was impressed by any of them he didn’t show it: he just answered, thoughtfully and openly. Some of the questions were inconsequential, and she learned about his favorite foods, music and pastimes. Others were relevant but of historic rather than personal significance: his childhood, his adulthood, where he’d been for specific important events and how he recalled them.
The most valuable were the personal ones, the ones that cut him when asked. He bore each one stoically, but she still captured a wide gamut of his emotes; he had a very expressive physicality to him, and didn’t so much grin or snarl as radiate a feeling with his whole body.
The end came rather suddenly, right as she was getting into her zone and he’d finally began to show the strain of the shoot. She’d taken hundreds of pictures but she knew immediately that half of the piece would be what she took right at the end. He was tired, his fur was soaked through and matted, there was a certain… feralness that just didn’t come through any way else.
And the timer went off to mark the moment when there were no more questions, right as she thought of a whole bunch more.
“Nope, sarry,” he said as he padded out of the setup to retrieve his belongings. “But I think ‘yer ready for those words.”
“The recorder’s running,” she said. Internally, though, she had a pretty good idea what he was going to say.
He sighed, turned to face it, and spoke clearly and solemnly. “I am Daar. Brother, Father, Champion Emeritus of the most ancient and honorable Clan Stoneback, Great Father of the Gao… and I am the bloodiest known mass murderer in galactic history.”
That done, he turned to look at her. “Use those words first, please. They’re important.”
“I promise.”
His nose twitched, and that seemed to be satisfactory.
“It was a pleasure meetin’ you, Miss Ríos,” he said, and was gone. Ava was left to consider her photos and everything she’d learned. About Daar, about herself, about Derek and Adam and all the SOR…
It had left her standing on a place of quiet certainty, however. She knew, without a doubt, that this one was going to be special.